PSP Ram Dump

Fabre posted something that amazed me on ps2dev. I would have never thought to do this. ..

I noticed that in the technical specs, it mentions 4 MB of DRAM. Is the other 32 MB Static RAM? If it is, you could just hook up an external power source to the RAM chip, wait until a point at which the decoded modules would be in RAM, then disconnect the chip, keeping the power lines attached. Drop it in a reader, and you have all the decoded modules you need :D

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=1787

This can be extremely useful to understand what is in memory so it can be exploited or crashed to run homebrew code.

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6 ways to crash the Wipeout Browser

tbminc over at ps2dev was been able to put the wipeout browser into a buffer overflow mode and execute other system functions. This looks promising for doing an exploit.

With help of #pspdev i was able to continously call "sceKernelSleepThread", so sound continued but browser crashed. yay.

The binary is in fact loaded to 08900000. That location seems to be "static", it isn't randomized or so.

Next big task is to place some more interesting code somewhere where we know the memory address of. I haven't succeeded here for now.

Damn, i wish i had a ramdump of the running game...

If anyone has info for him, or wants to start trying this for themselves check out this thread:

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=1948

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1.50, 1.51 Homebrew Exists

So the guys at http://www.ps2nfo.com/ are posting some info about a way to run their own code on a 1.50 and 1.51 PSP. The people that have the code that makes it work are software pirates. I do not promote piracy, and I agree that it hurts the video game industry (look at Dreamcast).

However, if anyone was going to figure it out, it would be the software pirates, because they have the most desire to be the first. If these files surface, I will be sure to post about them right here. But as of yet, my 1.5 PSP is still useless to me for homebrew.

Also, there is a thread on ps2dev from a newbie claiming he modified the snes emulator to run on a 1.5. However once in the emulator it would not let him load games. Probably BS, but check it out if you want:

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?p=13928#13928

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PSP Homebrew Exploding

A huge list of PSP Homebrew programs has been compiled and posted on:
http://www.psphacker.com/forum/showthread.php?t=200

The list grows by the hour. t seems like now there is am emulator to test, programmers are lining up to get a psp dev kit and start compiling software. Unfortounately all of these programs still only work on a 1.0 PSP. So far all attempts to run code on a 1.5 PSP have gone unsuccessful.

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PSP Emulator for PC

So there is a PSP emulator for the PC that will emulate some of the homebrew apps. This will not run any retail games. It's simply a way for the programmers to test their homebrew apps.

from gotxp on php-hacks.com

"The site psphacker.com had a thread about a ELF PBP Interpreter. If you download it and the SDL.dll library you have a PSP Emulator.
At least the Hello World homebrew app worked here.

Here´s the thread
http://www.psphacker.com/2005/05/elf-for-pbp-interpreter.html#comments

Download these files

http://www.psphacker.com/pspe.zip
http://www.hot.ee/cone3d/tutorials/tut1c/SDL.dll"


I have tried quite a few of apps and they seems to mostly emulate!

Tetris Works
PSPlasma Works
HelloWorld Works
Trivia Works

------- shortly after ----------

w00t thre is a new version out that lets you select from many games... allows ms access... It also supports A LOT more games!!!

And can load plain elf files... if you are too lazy to put them in the PBP format!!

The new version can be dwlded from here:

http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/pspe04.zip

PS: It required a NEW sdl lib.... which can be dwlded from here:

http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.8-win32.zip

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PSP Firmware 1.0

Someone has used the previously mentioned tools to extract a 1.0 firmware form their PSP. I'm not sure how useful it is. While it's good to have the files for exploration, most of them are encrypted and useless.

Besides that, there is no known way to package these files into a valid 'firmware updater' program to downgrade a PSP.

Some people are experimenting with the 1.50 and 1.51 to see if a downgrade process is even possible. What really sucks is that now that Sony will be putting firmware on the UMD disks, and requiring an update to play the game, it really hurts when a new game comes out and you have to lose all of your hacks and homebrew software to play it. At least until someone cracks the new version of firmware.

I see a long battle ahead. Best of luck to the programmers! Ps2Dev.org seems to be making the best progress out of all of the sites I've visited.

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Second PSP Emulator: SNES

The author of the GB emulator is hard at work porting an SNES emulator to the PSP. No code has been released yet, but there are a few screenshots here:

http://www.psp-hacks.com/?p=83

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